Neverisms Page 9
Never kiss and tell.
Since the early 1700s, this has been the preferred phrase for advising people to keep the details of an intimate relationship secret. In modern times, the meaning of “kiss and tell” has been extended to incorporate those who reveal intimate secrets for revenge, publicity, or financial gain (as when people write a kiss-and-tell book). While the act of kissing and telling has been going on for millennia, it wasn’t until the late 1600s when a formal admonishment about it appeared in John Dryden’s lyric poem “Fair Iris and Her Swain” (turned into a song by composer Henry Purcell for a 1690 production of Dryden’s Amphitryon). Here’s the relevant passage, which includes the first appearance in print of the now-famous neverism:Fair Iris, kiss me kindly,In pity of my fate,and kindly still, and kindlyBefore it is too late.You fondly court your bliss,And no advances make,’Tis not for maids to give,But ’tis for men to take:So you may kiss me kindly,And I will not rebel;But do not kiss and tell,No never kiss and tell.
Never bite off more than you can chew.
This saying about running the risk of failure by overreaching or attempting too much seems ancient, but The Yale Book of Quotations says the warning first showed up in an 1895 New York Times article as “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” In my research, though, I’ve discovered a number of earlier usages, and all have used the neveristic phrasing. An 1887 article in the Albany Law Journal criticized a former New York City judge’s behavior in several cases, including one involving “Boss” Tweed. Apparently, the judge had inserted himself into the proceedings in a variety of inappropriate ways, including the questioning of witnesses from the bench and expressing his own personal opinions about the evidence. After a higher court ruled that the judge’s behavior was improper, the unnamed author of the article (but almost certainly editor Irving Browne) suggested that the saying was already quite popular when he wrote:“Never bite off more than you can chew” is an excellent motto for a judge or an ex-judge, and this ex-judge would do well to pencil it on his cuff for handy reference.
Never make the same mistake twice.
Often presented as Don’t make the same mistake twice, this proverb has been popular since colonial times. It’s acceptable to make one mistake, according to this sentiment, but if you make the same mistake twice—or more often—then you have committed the error of not learning from your experience. The saying continues to show up in fascinating ways. In 2009, The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Nene Leakes titled her memoir: Never Make the Same Mistake Twice: Lessons on Love and Life Learned the Hard Way.
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
This quotation has been attributed to Mark Twain, William Randolph Hearst, and many others, but the original author has never been conclusively identified. The underlying idea, of course, is that the truth is sometimes sacrificed in order to tell a good story or sell more newspapers. The saying has often been mockingly attributed to newspaper publishers and writers, with some cynics even calling it “the first rule of journalism.” Over the years, many people in the journalism profession have even adopted the saying—half-seriously, half in jest—as a personal motto. The line made a memorable appearance in 1994 as the tagline for The Paper, a film with an all-star cast that included Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall. In a popular variation of the saying, “the truth” is replaced by “the facts.”
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Now regarded as a political axiom, this saying has been attributed to Bonaparte for more than a century (although it has never been found in his writings). A popular 1910 book of quotations provided a slightly different translation, ending it with “making a false movement” instead of “making a mistake.” A similar observation from Woodrow Wilson can be found in the politics & government chapter.
Never say die.CHARLES DICKENS
This saying—which urges people to never give up, never give in, or never give up hope—was already popular in 1849, when it made an appearance in the Charles Dickens novel Barnaby Rudge (it also later showed up in several other works by Dickens). It went on to become one of history’s most famous sayings, serving as the title of four Hollywood films, over two dozen books, and at least a half-dozen songs (from such disparate artists as Waylon Jennings, Black Sabbath, and Bon Jovi), and the name of one thoroughbred racehorse.
Never take anything for granted.BENJAMIN DISRAELI
English politician and prime minister Benjamin Disraeli may not be the first person in history to offer this famous admonition, but he inserted the words into an 1864 speech.
Never complain, never explain.BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Disraeli used this saying on many occasions in the mid–1800s, and it is often described as his motto. It has been adopted by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of others, often verbatim, and sometimes with minor tweaks. In 1943, Stanley Baldwin, another former English prime minister, was quoted as saying:
You will find in politics that
you are much exposed to the attribution of false motives.
Never complain and never explain.
The saying is often associated with Henry Ford II, the grandson of Henry Ford. In 1974, while serving as chairman of the board of the Ford Motor Company, the fifty-seven-year-old Ford was arrested for drunk driving in Santa Barbara, California. The arrest was widely reported because it included one potentially salacious detail—at the time of his arrest, the married Ford was accompanied by thirty-five-year-old Kathleen DuRoss, a woman who was believed to be his mistress (a few years later, when Ford split with second wife Cristina, she became Ford’s third wife). Ford was ultimately convicted of the offense and given two years’ probation. As he was leaving the courthouse after the sentencing, he was greeted by a mob of reporters. When asked to comment, he said only four words: “Never complain, never explain.” The phrase became so popularly associated with Ford that Victor Lasky’s 1981 biography of Ford was titled Never Complain, Never Explain: The Story of Henry Ford II. The original line was Disraeli’s, though, and over the years it inspired many similar observations. You’ll find a number of them in later chapters, but here are three more:
Never contradict. Never explain. Never apologize.
(Those are the secrets of a happy life).JOHN ARBUTHNOT FISHER
Never explain—your friends do not need it
and your enemies will not believe you anyway.ELBERT HUBBARD, in The Motto Book (1907)
Never apologize and never explain—it’s a sign of weakness.JOHN WAYNE, in the 1949 film She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.ROBERT J. HANLON
This now-classic line made its first appearance in print in Murphy’s Law, Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong, Arthur Bloch’s 1980 sequel to his first Murphy’s Law book, published a few years earlier. The observation was simply described as “Hanlon’s Razor,” and for many years, people thought Hanlon was a fictional creation of Bloch’s. After all, the observation bears a close resemblance to a famous line from Robert Heinlein’s 1941 sci-fi story “Logic of Empire”: “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
But there was a very real person behind the quotation, and after discussing it with Hanlon’s widow, Regina, and his son, Robert, I’m happy to tell the story here. For many years, Robert J. Hanlon was a computer programmer at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Scranton, Pennsylvania. After reading the first Murphy’s Law book, he decided to accept the publisher’s invitation for readers to submit “laws” of their own creation for a planned sequel. Several months after submitting his creation, he was delighted to learn that his never attribute to malice creation would be appearing in the book. As a “prize” for his selection, Hanlon ultimately received ten copies of the sequel when it was published in 1980, and there are some friends and family members who still treasure the copies that Hanlon autographed for them. Hanlon was deeply interested in poetr
y and literature, and would often amaze people with his ability to recite extensive passages from Shakespeare’s works completely from memory. But did he ever read Robert Heinlein’s “Logic of Empire”? That we will never know.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing;
it wastes your time and annoys the pig.ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
This line, which first appeared in Heinlein’s 1973 sci-fi classic Time Enough for Love, was delivered by the character Lazarus Long, an earthling who was born in a selective-breeding experiment, raised on distant planets, and able to live for several centuries (he first appeared in Heinlein’s 1941 novel Methuselah’s Children). Long, who appeared in five Heinlein novels, is one of the genre’s most enduring characters, and this observation appears at the conclusion of a remarkable passage. In a conversation with a friend about dealing with greedy people, he says:I have never swindled a man. At most I keep quiet and let him swindle himself. This does no harm, as a fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from the experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Shortly after Time Enough for Love was published, this admonition began to enjoy great popularity. And while Heinlein clearly was the original author of the saying about never teaching pigs to sing, I now believe he may have been inspired by an even earlier observation about pigs—and one that has nothing to do with singing:
Never wrestle with a pig;
you’ll get dirty, and only the pig enjoys it.
This warning about getting dragged into the mud during a dispute with a disagreeable or obnoxious person emerged during World War II, but it began to show up with far greater frequency after it was mentioned in a 1950 Time magazine profile of Cyrus Ching. After decades of work as a labor-management arbitrator and dispute mediator, the seventy-four-year-old Ching had just been named by President Truman to head up a new government agency called the Wage Stabilization Board. When the plain-speaking Ching was asked how he felt about the criticism he was likely to be getting for taking on the thankless responsibility of stabilizing wages, he replied: “I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and besides the pig likes it.”
Never tell tales out of school.LEMUEL HOPKINS, in a 1786 issue of The Anarchiad
The phrase “telling tales out of school” first appeared in William Tyndale’s 1530 book Practice of Prelates. In the 1600s, an English proverb emerged that extended the concept: “You must not tell tales out of the tavern.” Hopkins, though, was one of the first—if not the first—to use the neveristic version. The saying is often used to chastise someone who has revealed a secret or passed along information that was better left unsaid.
Never take counsel of your fears.THOMAS “STONEWALL” JACKSON
This was a favorite saying of the legendary Confederate general, heard by his officers and troops on many occasions. It has been adopted by many subsequent military leaders, most notably George S. Patton, who said it this way: “After you make a decision, do it like hell—and never take counsel of your fears.”
Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.GEN. DOUGLAS A. MACARTHUR, citing the single most
important thing he learned from his father, a Civil War hero
Never look back;
something might be gaining on you.LEROY “SATCHEL” PAIGE, in the 1948 book Pitchin’ Man:
Satchel Paige’s Own Story (written with Hal Lebovitz)
This is the most famous saying from one of the most famous players in sports history. And though this is the way Paige wrote it in his 1948 autobiography, it was phrased in a slightly different way in a profile on Paige in a 1953 issue of Collier’s magazine. The magazine profile included a “Rules for Staying Young” sidebar that offered this version: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” Paige used both sayings over the years, but appeared to favor the more forceful neveristic one.
five
Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman: And a Lot of Other Things as Well
“Never Underestimate” Neverisms
In February of 1883, the popular American magazine Tribune and Farmer inaugurated a single-page supplement for the wives of its overwhelmingly male readership. Titled “Women at Home,” the original feature was written by the magazine’s publisher, Cyrus Curtis. When his wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, read the piece, she wasn’t exactly impressed. She liked the idea of a female-targeted supplement, though, and volunteered to produce the next issue. Mr. Curtis wisely accepted his wife’s offer to help.
Ten months after Mrs. Curtis took the helm, the supplement became so popular with female readers of Tribune and Farmer that it was spun off as an independent publication: The Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper. With Mrs. Curtis serving as editor and chief writer, the magazine quickly dominated the field of publications aimed at a female audience. The title was soon streamlined to Ladies’ Home Journal, and for the first time an apostrophe was added after Ladies. At five cents per copy and fifty cents for a year’s subscription, the magazine was becoming a true American success story.
By 1889, the job of editing the publication became so demanding that Mrs. Curtis told her husband she could no longer serve as full-time editor. Mr. Curtis decided to keep control of the magazine in the family, naming his twenty-six-year-old son-in-law, Edward W. Bok, as editor. The move was a huge gamble, but it paid off handsomely, as the young man began to show unexpected business acumen as well as promotional ingenuity. Beginning with his first issue in January of 1890 and continuing until his retirement thirty years later, Bok took the magazine to a level its founders only dreamed about. By the end of the century, Ladies’ Home Journal was America’s best-selling magazine. In 1903, it became the first magazine in publishing history with a paid circulation of more than a million copies.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, the magazine reflected every major trend in American culture, and created a number of them as well. As you sit in your living room tonight, you can thank Edward Bok for the term. When he took over as editor, drawing room and parlor were the preferred terms for a formal room that was used only on Sundays and special occasions. In proposing the idea of a “living room” that would be used daily to replace “drawing rooms” that were expensively furnished and used only rarely, Bok wrote:We have what is called a “drawing room.” Just whom or what it “draws” I have never been able to see unless it draws attention to too much money and no taste.
Despite its commercial success and influential role in American culture, Ladies’ Home Journal did not have a steady and reliable slogan for the first sixty-three years of its existence. That all changed in 1946, however, when the October issue hit the stands with a lushly designed cover containing the words:
Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman.
While this now-legendary saying was declared an official slogan with the publication of that historic issue, it was first created in 1939, when a copywriter at N. W. Ayer & Son, America’s first advertising agency, proposed it as a possible advertising slogan. The idea was batted around for a while before being tossed aside. That is, until it was resuscitated in a fascinating tale of serendipity.
A few weeks before the meeting in which the never underestimate slogan was rejected, an Italian émigré named Leo Lionni had been hired by Ayer as a graphic designer. A few years earlier, Lionni had abandoned his training as an economist (he had a degree from the University of Genoa) to pursue his interest in art and design. And even though he had no formal artistic training, he was able to secure a position as a graphic designer for a firm in Milan.
The growing Nazi threat was looming, however, and in 1938 Lionni and his wife became alarmed by the deteriorating political situation in Italy. In 1939, he left his wife and two young children behind as he boarded an ocean liner bound for New York City (they would join him several years later).
After failing to land a job in Manhattan, he headed to Philadelphia, a city he had lived in briefly as a boy. Lionni was thrilled when he was soon offered the position at N. W. Ayer. Founded in Philadelphia in 1869, the firm was an industry powerhouse, responsible for scores of successful advertising campaigns and such legendary advertising slogans as “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” and “When it rains it pours” for Morton Salt.
Two weeks into his job, Lionni was chatting with Betty Kidd, a veteran copywriter at the firm, when his eyes spotted a crumpled piece of paper in a nearby wastepaper basket. He could make out only a few words, but he was intrigued enough to reach down and snatch it from the basket. As he smoothed out the paper on his lap, he began reading the words “Never underestimate . . .” when Kidd interrupted to say, “Oh, that! It was an idea for Ladies’ Home Journal, but hopeless to illustrate.” Nobody knows for certain who first suggested the slogan a few days earlier. It might have been Betty Kidd, or possibly Charles Coiner, the firm’s art director. But this much is clear. As often happens with ideas that are floated in brainstorming sessions, this one had been briefly considered, rejected as unworkable, and then—quite literally—dumped.
As his conversation with Kidd ended, Lionni folded the piece of discarded paper, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and promptly forgot about it. Several days later, when the crumpled piece of paper resurfaced, he started doodling with his pen. Almost immediately, he began constructing a series of two-panel drawings just under the Never underestimate the power of a woman saying. The first panel showed a man failing at an activity and the second a woman succeeding at the same task. Believing he might be on to something, he sent the doodles to Betty Kidd along with a note that said: